China’s economy is growing at a healthy clip, with its gross domestic product growing at an annual rate of 7.2% in 2016, according to the World Bank.
But its economy has been battered by a host of problems, including the country’s debt, a weak global economy and the political fallout from the massive protests that swept China in 2015.
The latest figures, released Wednesday, show the country has a surplus of $1.5 trillion, or 3.2 trillion yuan, compared to $1 trillion, $1,000 billion and $600 billion last year, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said.
The government has pledged to spend the surplus on public projects and other initiatives, and the economy is expected to grow by around 6% in the first quarter of 2019, the WTO said.
China is one of the world’s biggest exporters of steel, coal, iron ore, nickel and other commodities, and its economic growth has been a boon to many countries that depend on imports.
But the Chinese economy has become a major headache for the global economy as its debt ballooned and its trade deficit widened, prompting it to slash foreign aid and impose curbs on the yuan.
China’s official unemployment rate of nearly 16% was one of its highest in the developed world, and it was one out of five of the worst among the 19 countries the WTO’s trade watchdog listed as experiencing “significant trade barriers” in 2016.
That has left many of its neighbors struggling with a severe shortage of workers.
A recent government report showed that China had lost nearly two million jobs between June and September, a number that the government said had reached 2.1 million.
The U.S. and China are the biggest sources of jobs in China, with the U.K., Germany and France also providing jobs, according the WTO.
But some of those jobs are mostly in the service sector, which has become more and more important as China has become increasingly reliant on robots and other technology.
China has also lost about 5 million jobs in the last decade, most of them in the manufacturing sector, and lost around 20% of its workforce, according data from the countrys Ministry of Commerce.
A Chinese factory owner inspects the work of a robot at the construction site of a new housing development in Zhongnanhai, Zhejiang province, China, September 16, 2021.
REUTERS/Stringer
